I'm getting fed up with MS Office, and Word in particular, seeming to muscle other programs out of the way.

When I try to switch between programs using Cmd-Tab, if Word is running, then the first thing that comes up, even if I select another program, is Word. I then have to Cmd-Tab again to get the program I want.

This has happened over and over again, mostly with Word, sometimes with other Office programs. What's going on?

My system is OSX Mavericks 10.9.5 on a MacBook Pro 9.2.