Professionalism; Ethics; Competitiveness; or Plagiarism!

A few months have gone by! I was fuming then! I still am! A myriad of thoughts have crossed my mind during this period, surrounding an unprecedented experience that I just can't believe I saw and hope I never ever face again.   I have been engaged on a very large consulting assignment that involves multiple service partners / vendors - some big, global names including a Big 4. Each Vendor has a clear role to play in the journey and thereby, some very clear expectations and deliverable. From Day Zero, the Client has beaten the drum of "One Team", "Collaboration", "Honesty", etc. etc. as the principles to live by. You wouldn't expect anything else, anyways....these are the basic values to live by, regardless of the size, geography or nature of work.   The team I am working in delivered on a key expectation some months ago. This involved an extremely intensive, stressful period with mind-boggling hours of dedicated work. It was my firms deliverable; the other Vendors contributed "nothing" except project management of the schedule and reporting to the Client. Our team carried it on our shoulders. Yet.....   Two months ago, the Client's global leadership team was presented an update on the program. It was a different Vendors' deliverable - they arranged everything, including the messaging, etc.   As key partners to the program, we were not invited!   I know! That's not good enough a reason to be thrown into a fit of rage (I checked on this; I am using the most appropriate emotion here).   We were not even shown the content of update presented to the leadership team!   I guess the rage may still not get justified! So what happened??   Our deliverable from those intense weeks of blood, sweat and tears was reported by one of the partner vendors as THEIR contribution / achievement. Some fancy slides mentioned how this Vendor had brought their repository of past knowledge and credentials to deliver an output that was world class and next generation! Wow!!   Some of you may wonder - how did I come to know? Well, it took a bit more than networking to get access to the packs this partner had presented to the Clients' leadership team. Their reluctance was understandable, in hindsight.   You would pardon the blood in my eyes. 30 people toiled for 18 hours a day, 7 days a week for 1 full month! Gone with a puff of smoke!   Even after a repeated CTRL+F search for our firms name and rubbing my eyes in disbelief for an over hour, nothing had changed!   Since that day, I have been left wondering - is it just a different form of professionalism, ethics or mere competitive behaviour? No matter how many arguments someone may give me, I believe this was plain and simple Plagiarism!   Wikipedia says, Plagiarism is the "wrongful appropriation" and "purloining and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions," and the representation of them as ones own original work.   To my mind, the question here is not, "Why did they do it?" But "What did they achieve from it?"   Someone has said, "Winning is not always important; what is important is that you stand for something. If you do not stand for something, what do you win?"   One thing they've lost is "respect"!   And another thing this Vendor has definitely lost forever is a prospective Client! Me!